Odd Haberdashery
by supermassive ego
Summary: Eight hundred years was a rather long period for a continuity timeskip- even so, two people seemed to stay the same.


A/N: why the lack of prequel in the archive. we need more prequel, by Jove. fandom, i'm not angry- just disappointed.

Roulade was a beautiful girl who could see spirits and capture the hearts of young men, as well as women, and other individuals who identified outside the human gender binary. She also had an odd taste in hats (one which found itself catching on with other students of Will O'Wisp; an honourable example was Pistachio Maplewood who had taken to donning a pair of breeches on his cranium) and didn't talk very much. That was part of her charm. But, uh, she wasn't a Mary-Sue or anything. No, she had been named after a particularly calorific dessert.

Cafe au Lait liked Roulade. Even though he was a robot. Like I said, non-binary. For some reason, everyone still referred to him using male pronouns anyway, including the author, so technically the crush was a heterosexual one. Which was a shame, because I don't see many LGBTQ robosexual love stories around, and wouldn't that be great? Anyway. Roulade had held a special spot in the cafeteria of Cafe au Lait's mechanical heart for a while. Specifically, she had her own table somewhere in the left ventricle, where she batted her eyelashes and went "you can't sit with me" to anyone naïve enough to approach. The table was squeaky-clean and had a nice jug of water in the middle. Where was I? Oh, yeah. So Cafe au Lait liked Roulade a lot and nobody knew how Roulade felt back except Olive Tearclown who could read minds, because Roulade is the protagonist of an RPG and therefore did not speak a whole lot. Cafe au Lait didn't really mind, though. She was cool. Decent. Nicely put-together, for a human.

Then the series was given a timeskip of about eight-hundred years, according to the official website.

Forget about Roulade. Well, not entirely. Meet her great-great-great-something-granddaughter, Cocoa.

Cocoa could not see spirits, because they'd probably gone extinct by then. However, she was very pretty, hardly ever talked, and had an odd taste in hats. As you can probably tell, going through Cocoa's lineage was like a continual print-out of a pretty, haberdashery-loving girl on pristine Xerox paper, even though the brand Xerox did not exist in the Baklava solar system, nor printers. Despite this, Cocoa's family tree was indeed illustrated in depth on fresh printer paper, incredibly white, and acid-free, suitable for office tasks. It was a sight to behold.

There was another thing that likened Cocoa to her ancestor, although that thing had not been nearly as common with the other descendants. That thing was the presence of a robotic classmate within their respective peer groups, who may or may not have had a massive crush on the girl in question. Cocoa's mechanical suitor happened to be Mokka, who looked remarkably similar to his counterpart from eight hundred years ago.

Now hold on. For anyone who's robot-savvy, or at least has half a brain, robots are immortal. As long as there's somebody around to change their batteries, they don't die, right? So, in theory, Mokka and Cafe au Lait could have met at one point. They could have been Kovomaka's own Daft Punk, only actual, real robots. One of them would be Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and the other could be Thomas Bangalter. Except that would be impossible, because they were both the same robot.

Hold on, you say. Da Funk are you on about?

Mokka and Cafe au Lait were roughly the same robot, anyway. There was a reason they looked remarkably similar, and by 'remarkably similar' I mean exactly the same, minus a little height difference. The main thing separating the two was Mokka's superior design- Harder Better Faster Stronger, if we're going to continue to make farcical Daft Punk references. Principal Biscotti had found Cafe au Lait's rust-wrought shell in a curiosity shop, along with several other units who decidedly weren't Cafe au Lait in that they lacked a cool, nihilistic personality and an interest in blonde human girls, and had used those several other units to make Cafe au Lait mighty once again, exchanging his coffee-themed name for... well, another coffee-themed name, except in German. No, it's not a misspelling- get it right, fandom! Goodness gracious.

So the newly-christened Mokka was enrolled into Will O'Wisp once more, even though he hadn't technically left or graduated; just got made into an oven. This was sort of questionable on Principal Biscotti's part, because he was also immortal. Not a robot, mind, just a wizard. His receding hairline had apparently taken quite a toll on the old man's hippocampus, otherwise he would have probably remembered that he was inducing the exact same robot into Will O'Wisp now that he had eight hundred years ago, personality and preference in women and all.

Naturally, when Mokka met Cocoa, his first instinct was to get a big, dumb crush on her. (You could say it was an Instant Cru- augh! Auuughhh! AUUUUUGHHHHH! (This is an official citation from the Department of Puns. If this author makes another Daft Punk reference within this oneshot, we will punch a bear directly in the face. Directly. Think of the bears.)) Ugh, so, er... yeah, this infatuation was kind of like, a progressive one, you dig? It wasn't, like, rushed or anything. Not an instant crush. Yeah! Definitely not an instant crush. Whew...

Cocoa captured his cold, ticking heart in much the same way that Roulade did, only most of that instance had been wiped from Mokka's memory, so there wasn't much space for him to question the moral prerequisites about falling in love with your old flame's great-great-great-great-whatever-granddaughter. Which was a relief for the rating system. But as far as this new robot was concerned, this Cocoa girl- she was everything. She was _kawaii desu_, she was _moe-moe_, she was a god damn incorrigible uncrossable matriarch who silently slipped exploding gummy frogs into the schoolbags of those who dared mock her slight social discomfort. Fortunately, Mokka was wise enough to never make that mistake, which was more than could be said of Pico, resident fire mage, who wasn't fire-magey enough to tough out a miniature explosion within his satchel without some lasting physical repercussions. Ever wonder why he's only got two toes? Yeah, no, the whole 'tabis to go with samurai attire' part is a lie- it's a war injury. But I digress. Mokka had never made the connection between the mysterious combustions and his darling Cocoa, the apple of his only optic eye, so as far as he knew, Cocoa was an angel and must be protected at all costs. And that was what he did.

Cocoa, again, was a protagonist, so she didn't talk much beyond the occasional "yes" or "no". But he loved the sound of her voice, he did. It was so quiet when it emerged, but so sweet, like a bell. When she cast spells to brutally smash small stars upon the heads of her enemies, she raised her voice to this adorable half-squeak, and usually her victims were too busy comparing her to a dormouse to notice the astral terror headed straight for them. Certain other cast members of Brownie Brown games would have been proud of the PK Starstorm this girl could pull off. Often Mokka found himself overwhelmed by her grace with light magic, often in a literal sense, as she had caused his photosensors to burn out on several occasions. Those incidents had always ended in the necessary Bira to replace them and usually a forlorn "sorry I burned ur eyes out :(" card, hand-made, courtesy of the assailant. Cocoa was a sweet girl like that. Mokka could have devoted a roughly 873-word-long oneshot fanfiction to how that human made him feel, and as a matter of fact, he did, once.

He was naïve enough to assume that Cocoa had captured his heart in a way that no other could, human, female, or none of the above. Had the memory of Roulade been lost on him?

Probably.

Did he still love dearly a certain breed of human girl; blonde, charming, silent, with a funny taste in hats?

Yes, he did.


End file.
